~Author UnknownA dream which is not interpreted is like a letter which is not read. ~The TalmudDreams are illustrations... from the book your soul is writing about you. ~Marsha NormanA dream has power to poison sleep. ~Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Mutability"Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives. ~William DementDreams are today's answers to tomorrow's questions.
Melinda is a limited omniscient first person Speaker, which knows all about herself, but not about the others involved in the story. This really amplifies the emotional connection that grows on you as you read deeper into the book. Being only 197 pages, it has one of the biggest impacts on my life, book-wise. Understanding the pain of Melinda Sordino becomes much easier when she is the one to explain it to the reader. Her feeling of insecurity, being trapped, and alone, can be almost felt through the text as the story reaches to the long awaited climax, and then the quick resolution.
As an example two influential short stories will be discussed in depth in order to shed light into the lives of the two authors and their stories. The short stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) and Angela Carter (1940–1992) both sideway the same idea; the confinement of women in particular roles and positions in both personal and professional lives, posed on them by patriarchal figures. Toril Moi quotes in her examination of feministic criticism, Sexual/Textual Politics (2002), Elaine Showalter’s idea that “women writers should not be studied as a distinct group on the assumption that they write alike, or even display stylistic resemblances distinctively feminine” (Moi, 2002: 49), which comes across when reading the two stories which are stylistically already very different. It might be so that a feminist reader of both times (there’s some 80 years difference between the two stories) did not only want to see her own experiences mirrored in fiction, but strived to identify with strong, impressive female characters (Moi, 2002: 46), and looked for role-models that would instil positive sense of feminine identity by portraying women as self-actualising strong identities who were not dependent on men (Moi, 2002, 46). The two stories bring out two female characters, very different by position and character; the other a new mother, scared and confused of her own role, and the other a young newly-wed girl, still a child, being fouled by a much older man, mainly as a mark of his authority over women in general.
That was a key indicator to me that they had something between them other than the looks and giggles. On their way home they are talking about going sledding, since Mattie had never done it before. When they arrive home, the key is not under the mat and Zeena is usually in bed by now. Zeena comes to the door, and you can tell she is highly suspicious of the two, but she is only worried about herself and needs Ethan’s money for her doctor
Self created or felt from another persons doing, this separation of ones being must be dealt with. Life comes with its misfortunes. Isolation and abandonment alongside poverty; all battlefields which have their heroes; obscure heroes, sometimes greater than the memorable heroes. Mary Helen Washington, a novelist and a critic, quoted that in reading the story, “A Jury of Her Peers”, written by Susan Glaspell, possess “a tremendous sense of…isolation” (Penfield 87). This short story offers a real sense of its dramatic dialogue, describing the very nature of isolation and its eerie sense, dwelling in several scenarios throughout this story.
For the author of A Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, surrounds this very mysterious character with the issue of a wallpaper that is consuming the characters life. Gilman describes the characters dementia without directness to an "insanity". Jane, the main character knows that she has a mental issue and uses this journal to describe how she slowly loses her sanity. The curtness of how she lost her way made the story a little creepier, and more mysterious. In a novel the author could describe her past life for chapters and chapters, but knowing her life for such a short period of time made the story
When I fell down I got right back up and stood up for what I believed in even though it was tough and hard to sleep with. But I need that spark to get psyched back up, so I can get out of this dump. Something to believe in: something like love. I don’t know how I got in this position that I’m in. It’s like I fell asleep and just woke up.
! Although on the surface, the narrator in the short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, may seem like a fictional character only developed to be interesting to an audience, many comparisons can be drawn between the narrators life and the life of the author Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Similarities can be drawn between the diagnosis of mental illness, the methods of treatment received, and relationships present in both her life, and the life of her character. All of the experiences of her life came to develop her feminist style of writing, which she is still well known for
During the communion of their race, a play on words is also used with dream. For the figure before them says, “Depending upon one another’s hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream. Now are ye undeceived” (880). During the length of Hawthorne’s story the word dream appears many times. This puts the question to the reader in which the author also asks out loud, “Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest and only dreamed a wild dream of a witch-meeting?” (881).
I rolled over and looked towards the faint light shining off my face at my bed side, its 2. Another sleepless night, I thought to myself. This has been going on for a while now, I never did believe in any paranormal activity so I just presumed it was water leaks. But something felt different about it tonight, my heart rate paced and the noises seem to get louder and louder. I couldn’t make out on what I was, it can only be described as whispers, and somehow it felt as if it was calling for me.